


rending the veil

by gotham_ruaidh



Series: Gotham Writes for Imagine Claire & Jamie [114]
Category: Outlander (TV), Outlander Series - Diana Gabaldon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-16
Updated: 2019-03-16
Packaged: 2019-11-19 03:31:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 867
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18130370
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gotham_ruaidh/pseuds/gotham_ruaidh
Summary: Imagine Claire (or Jamie and Claire if he's through the stones too) finds a way to communicate with Jenny and Ian through the stones





	rending the veil

**Author's Note:**

> originally posted at [Imagine Claire & Jamie](https://imagineclaireandjamie.tumblr.com/post/183451290416/imagine-claire-or-jamie-and-claire-if-hes) on tumblr

_Lallybroch, March 1763_

Jenny Fraser Murray lay wide awake, listening to the late winter wind whistle through the chimney and scratch her mother’s rosebush against the side of the house, wringing sweaty hands under the quilt.

“I can hear ye thinking,” her husband of twenty-three years murmured, voice muffled a bit by the blankets he’d piled on top of them before bed. “Is it Jamie’s latest letter? Ye ken he’s got a better place at that estate in England than we can find for him here.”

“It’s no’ that,” she sighed. “Have ye or any of the tenants seen any sign of drought coming this year?”

“Drought?” Slowly, carefully, Ian rolled on his side to face her. “No, but to be fair I havena thought to ask. We’ve had more rain than normal these past two years.”

“Weel – can ye ask around in the morning? Or get Fergus or Young Jamie or Michael to ask around, the next time they visit Broch Mordha?”

Ian frowned. “I can. That’s easy enough. But what’s this about?”

Jenny pushed back several blankets and rubbed her face with her hands. “Ye’ll think me daft.”

Ian snorted. “Too bad ye canna see me rolling my eyes, Janet. It’s a bit late for that.”

She sat up a bit against the headboard. “A dream. I saw it in a dream, just now.”

“All right,” he replied patiently. “And did this dream give ye any indication of when the drought would happen? Or how bad it would be?”

Jenny brought her knees to her chest, wrapping her arms around her legs. “No. None of those things.”

“So how did ye ken it was a drought, then? A drought here, on the estate?”

“Yes. I was sitting in the parlor downstairs. With Claire. She told me.”

Ian was very still for a while as the wind screamed outside.

“And she told ye about the potatoes, before Culloden. Aye. I’ll ask the lads in the morning.”

–

_Boston, March 1965_

Claire hung up her coat on the peg by the door and set down her keys in the crystal bowl in the entryway.

“In here!” Brianna called from somewhere within the house.

Claire followed her daughter’s voice to the kitchen, where Bree had covered the dining table with at least ten books, all open to different pages.

“What’s all this?”

Brianna rose and stretched. “World History project. I’m looking at how extreme weather events were recorded and reported at the time.”

“That’s an interesting topic.” Claire opened the fridge, searching for something to heat up.

“I made Daddy spaghetti bolognese for dinner – it’s on the top shelf.”

“Thank you, darling.” Claire removed the still-warm Pyrex refrigerator dish and set it on the counter. “Are you focusing on any country or century in particular?”

“Yeah – the British Isles in the eighteenth century.”

Brianna couldn’t see her mother slowly set down the glass lid, then press her palm to the Formica countertop. “Oh?”

“It’s really interesting. The English kept meticulous records. Here – July 20, 1752. A whirlwind associated with a thunderstorm lifted two boats right out of the River Thames in London. Then in October 1756, there was a tornado which destroyed houses and sank ships in Newcastle-upon-Tyne. Have you ever been there?”

“No.” Claire slid some spaghetti into a saucepan and turned on the stove, not looking at her daughter. “That’s one of the coldest parts of England, you know – up by the North Sea.”

Bree sat back down and turned a page in one of the books. “And it’s interesting that some of the accounts are contradictory. This one, for example, says that the summer of 1763 was very wet across England and Wales, but that there were reports across Scotland of a ‘great drought.’”

Claire vigorously stirred the spaghetti over high heat.

“That doesn’t really make sense – England and Wales and Scotland are so close together.”

“You’d be surprised at how different those places can be.” Claire glanced back at her daughter, furiously writing in her notebook. Turned back to the stove – seeing not the copper-bottomed pan and the red swirl of spaghetti, but the huge open hearth of Lallybroch, and Missus Crook stirring a huge iron pot over the fire, and Jenny chopping carrots on the table beside her.

It was history. Jenny and Ian and all of them were two hundred years dead.

Still. They weren’t just statistics in a textbook. The crops would have been stunted. Would they have had enough to eat?

Realizing she was burning the spaghetti, Claire quickly turned off the burner and picked up the saucepan, grabbing a cork coaster from the cabinet.

“Is there enough room for me?”

Bree carefully piled three books on top of each other, clearing a space for Claire. Gratefully Claire sat down, slurping spaghetti, listening to her daughter speak of events she no doubt could have experienced firsthand, had it all been different.

—–

_Mod Gotham’s note: There are reports of a “Great drought” across Scotland during the summer of 1763 ([source](https://t.umblr.com/redirect?z=https%3A%2F%2Fpremium.weatherweb.net%2Fweather-in-history-1750-to-1799-ad%2F&t=MzBiMTQxNWM3NDlkYjk1NDc5ODgyNmIyY2MxYzNhNzkzMTA4ODBiMSwwWVF3ZW9rTQ%3D%3D&b=t%3A3P1iDiJS-o_zACFmLNnnBQ&p=https%3A%2F%2Fimagineclaireandjamie.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F183451290416%2Fimagine-claire-or-jamie-and-claire-if-hes&m=1)). Note that in 1763, Jamie was still on parole at Helwater; meanwhile, in the spring of 1965, Claire was in Boston, and Brianna was wrapping up her junior year of high school._


End file.
